I can't imagine someone thanking the French for baguettes or the English for crumpets after winning there

Why stop with cuisine though? Djokovic and Nadal could have talked about kangaroos and wombats in their speeches at the Aussie Open.

I think Milos was thanking the tournament organizers for doing a good job in catering, for serving tasty sushi which happened to be one of his favourite food that originated in Japan.

I don't think there's anything wrong with thanking the French for baguettes either if you love'em to bits.
Baguettes and crumpets IMO are arguably less distinctive though.
Sushi OTOH is also viewed by many as a culinary art, sort of like French's haute cuisine?

But koalas, kangaroos and wombats isn't really "made in Australia", they're just animals living in their natural habitat.

I guess it's each individual's personal interpretation of his comment.
To me, it just sounded like a token of respect.

Phew. I finally can speak now. I was of afrail of my jinxing superpower, I didn't make a littlest noise all match long: I was silent as a mouse under the broom. Now I can speak and i feel like screaming: WOOHOO!!!! WE HAVE WAITED FOUR YEARS!

Kei's POS were strikes of genius, and finally, finally he is in good form, so fit, so fast, so strong! And so clever! The volley he played to make 5-0 30-15 was just LOL. Playing with Raonic like he was a child. And yes, Raonic looked like a lost kid in jungles, he didn't know what the hell is happening

somehow I doubt the organizers would have given him enough time to give proper credit to ikebana and Kabuki theatre

You have like 2 minutes up there; you say something nice about something you know about.

He could have thanked the crowd and fans and Kei in Japanese and called it a day...He didn't need to make a stereotypical comment about freakin sushi...Muglostards defending his ignorance, not shocking considering these are the same people who think a servebot will win slams and be Top 10 when he gets bagelled in a final Pure comedy these Muglostards

While you may be right, the match final preview on the skysports stream with two commentators, one being Peter Fleming, spent almost 15-20 minutes talking about the ins and outs of raonic's game and how much he has progressed (not takin anything away, raonic has had an amazing season). They spent only a few minutes on nishikori as more of an afterthought and Peter Fleming really did not know much about nishkori's play style and made a prediction based on nishikori's short stature as grounds for Milos winning the title with his serve and power. basically all he said was that nishikori was shy, short, and that he was at a natural disadvantage to a lot of players on the tour. It really shows the lack of emphasis on players like nishikori in western sports channels. They then progressed to talk about federer and nadal on hard court surfaces with no relation to the final and no more mention of nishikori. I may sound petty but one can't deny the preference these channels show. But I'm glad that nishikori can show that he can stand with the top guys with his own unique set of weapons.

It just shows Peter Fleming's ignorance and stereotypical mind. Kei is not short,for god's sake

Raonic actually posted multiple times about how much he was looking forward to the sushi on his Twitter so I do think it was a genuine comment, not a half-sarcastic remark. I think it's a big deal for him. He was probably nervous in the moment and was trying to think of something to say.